The Skinniest and Fattest US Cities Revealed

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Our nation's cities appear to be fat, according to a new
Gallup-Healthways poll, which found that at least 15 percent of
residents in 187 of the 190 metro areas surveyed are obese.

Boulder, Colo., came out on top as the skinniest city, with just
12.1 percent of residents considered obese, while the number of
obese in the fattest metro area, McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas,
soared to 38.8 percent. The state of Colorado snagged the top
spot as
the skinniest state in Gallup's 2011 survey of U.S. states.

The only three metro areas with obesity rates at or below 15
percent were Boulder, Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, Conn.,
and Fort Collins-Loveland, Colo. These would be the only cities
meeting the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention goal
of a 15 percent obesity rate in the United States.

The results come from the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index and
are based on interviews with more than 350,000 American adults
between Jan. 2 and Dec. 29, 2011. Participants reported their
height and weight, which was used to calculate body mass index,
or BMI, a measure of a person's fatness. BMI scores of 30 or
greater are considered obese. (For example, a 5-foot-4-inch woman
who weighs 174 pounds or more, or a 5-foot-10-inch man who weighs
209 pounds or more would have a BMI of 30.)

The metro areas are based on the U.S. Office of Management and
Budget's metropolitan statistical areas, which in many cases
include more than one city. For instance, the San Jose, Calif.,
statistical area also includes the smaller nearby cities of
Sunnyvale and Santa Clara.

Top 10 most obese metro areas (with percent of residents
considered obese):

The
nation's average obesity rate has held steady at about 26
percent in 2011, while the average for the 10 most obese metro
areas was 34.8 percent, compared with an average of 15.9 percent
for the least obese metro areas surveyed.

Adult obesity rates were higher than 15 percent in all but three
of the 190 metropolitan areas that Gallup and Healthways surveyed
in 2011. McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas, residents were the most
likely to be obese, at 38.8 percent, while people living in
Boulder, Colo., were the least likely, at 12.1 percent.

Supporting an abundance of research linking obesity with a long
list of health ailments, those living in the 10 most obese areas
were much more likely, compared with the skinniest cities, to
report chronic
diseases, including diabetes, high blood pressure, high
cholesterol and depression, at some point in their lives. For
instance, compared with people living in the lowest-obesity
cities, residents of the most obese areas were 70 percent more
likely to report diabetes, 58 percent more likely to have had a
heart attack, 30 percent more likely to report a diagnosis of
depression, and 23 percent more likely to report high
cholesterol, Gallup noted. [ Infographic:
Diabetes & Obesity in US ]

Obesity not only plagues the individual, it can also
drain Americans' wallets, with the National Institutes of
Health estimating the average incremental health-care cost for an
obese person is $1,429 every year. With that number, Gallup
estimates that in the 10 metro areas with the highest obesity
rates, Americans cumulatively pay about $1 billion more in annual
health-care costs than if those states had obesity rates of 15
percent.

For example, the McAllen-Edinburg-Mission metro area pays more
than $400 million in unnecessary health-care costs each year
because of its high obesity rate. If it reduced the obesity rate
to 15 percent, the area could potentially save more than $250
million annually, Gallup estimates.

The bottom line, according to Gallup officials, is a grim one:
"Even in metro areas that consistently post among the lowest
obesity rates in the nation, such as Boulder and Fort
Collins-Loveland, at least one in eight residents are still
obese," they write on their website. "The health and economic
burden of the chronic conditions resulting from obesity is very
real and very significant."

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